metallurgy

Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

n. The science that deals with procedures used in extracting metals from their ores, purifying and alloying metals, and creating useful objects from metals.

n. The study of metals and their properties in bulk and at the atomic level.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

n. The science of metals; their extraction from ores, purification and alloying, heat treatment, and working.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English

n. The art of working metals, comprehending the whole process of separating them from other matters in the ore, smelting, refining, and parting them; sometimes, in a narrower sense, only the process of extracting metals from their ores.

Examples

A 62-year-old car enthusiast with little interest in metallurgy, Lynch planned to sell it for salvage — until he happened to see a TV documentary about meteorites on the Travel Channel and realized that what he actually had was an approximately-4. 6 million-year-oldrelic from outer space.

Among the different groups of craftsmen that existed prior to colonization, those who specialized in metallurgy and feather art were considered the true artists and the most important within the larger group of artisans.